Leifer under house arrest
Malka Leifer is due to be released to home detention, after a rabbi who is widely regarded as a top champion of Israel’s underprivileged children stuck up for her in court.
Anti-abuse activists expressed outrage at Jerusalem District Court yesterday as the judge agreed to release Leifer on bail, freeing her from a secure facility to a private home in northern Israel.
“I’m shocked and really appalled,” Shana Aaronson of Jewish Community Watch told The AJN. When she first heard the judge’s ruling, “I was so angry that I couldn’t even speak.” Alleged Leifer victim Dassi Erlich felt “shock and horror”.
The bombshell decision that Leifer is being released on Friday – unless an appeal is successful – came after a surprise development. The nationally-renowned rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, founder of a youth network which educates more than 12,000 students annually, showed up at court. Detaining Leifer is undignified, he argued, insisting that instead, she should live with one of his adult students.
Now, supervising Leifer in the student’s home falls is the responsibility of Grossman, the state-salaried Chief Rabbi of Migdal Ha’Emek in northern Israel, winner of the Israel Prize and the Jerusalem Unity Prize, a man nicknamed Disco Rabbi because of his outreach to youth, and founder of Migdal Ohr.
Grossman set up this organisation to help Israel’s disadvantaged youth and it has 16 schools on three campuses. Much of its activity is based in Migdal Ha’Emek, the city where Leifer is expected to be living.
In court yesterday the judge, as well as bailing Leifer, heard that a psychiatrist’s report which concludes she is fit to stand trial has still not been signed, delaying proceedings and infuriating her accusers. “What is the reason for this absolute failure of procedure?” asked alleged Leifer victim Dassi Erlich.
The head of a watchdog organisation that monitors Israel’s rabbinate told The AJN it is “sad” that a state rabbi has got involved in the case. Rabbi Seth Farber, director of ITIM, said of Grossman: “Sometimes his desire to do good blinds him to the basic facts of morality, human decency and halachah.”
Another leading rabbi said that Grossman’s decision to get involved blackens the name of the rabbinate. “The image that he’s creating is that the rabbinate is supporting, directly or indirectly, somebody accused of abuse,” David Stav, chairman of the Tzohar alliance of rabbis, said in an interview with The AJN.
He added: “It doesn’t contribute to the image of the rabbinate in the Jewish world or Israel. Rabbis should stand up for the weak people.”
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